Click through this app. What we will do here as a Key User is – add a new section called ‘Project Sponsor Email’ and then add a new custom field called ‘Project Sponsor Email’. Let’s see how to achieve this

Let’s go back to the Tile Custom Fields and Custom Business Logic and click on it

Once you are in, you will notice two tabs – Custom Fields and Custom Logic. For this blog, we will work with first tab – Custom Fields. Under this tab, if some custom fields are already created you will notice them in the list and the Business Context to which they are related to

To start creation of new field, click on the icon. Once you click on this icon, system will open a pop-up to provide new custom field properties

Select the Business Context, Label for your custom field, Identifier, Tool Tip and Type for the custom field

Now let’s understand what all these Field Properties mean to you as a Key User

Business Context – defines the business cases for which the new custom fields will be used. It primarily means that any new field which is created and assigned to a Business Context can be used for UI’s, Reports, Form Templates, Business Scenarios etc., are restricted to that Business Context only. Also, it is important to note that there is always a limited set of new custom fields

Label – is the field label that will appear on the UI

Identifier – Identifier identifies the newly created custom filed. In S/4HANA Cloud Extensibility every new field is identified by an identifier and it adopts a certain namespace provided by framework. For example – In the screen shot above –

YY1_: is for objects created in test system and that will be transported to production system. This namespace is only applicable for S/4HANA Cloud and not for On-Premise. The third part of the namespace for example _Cpr identifies the Business Context

Business Context Capacity – defines the storage capacity of the custom fields created by Key-User. As you can see in the screen shot above the new custom field will use 14% of the total storage provided by the standard

Once you click – Create and Edit, it is time to add more information about this custom field and enable its link

The first tab on this page is – General Information. Based on the type of field type chosen in the Field Properties, the details section will change. For example – Here for the field type – Email, the default length proposed by the system is 30. You can change the same

Move on to the tab – UI and Reports and enable the field usage of your custom field

Details about this tab –

Search Relevance – If you want to make the content of your field searchable then you may select this checkbox in Search Relevance column. This would make your field searchable in free-text searches

Details about other tabs –

Email Templates – You can also add your field to the corresponding email templates, and thus make them visible in your personal email template

Form Templates – As a Key user can also enable the usage of the custom fields in the custom form templates or pre-delivered form templates (…which are extensible). Form Template is nothing but SAP Pre-delivered templates that are used for Output/Print Management. For example, output form for Invoice, Credit Memo etc. (This is not covered in this blog. More information here à Maintain Form Templates)

Business Scenarios – In a scenario where you as a Key User wants to enable the field for more than one business scenarios

Now click on blue Save button to save the changes

Now it’s time to Publish these changes so that this new custom field is now available in the field list for this App

Click on the blue Publish button and the system will start publishing the field. It will take a little time, before this field is published and is available to you as a Key User

Once Published it will turn into green

This paragraph here is for technical guys or developers to know, what happens in the background when a new custom field is created and it gets published. Key Users kindly ignore this paragraph and jump to next paragraph (Key User continue here) below

Adding a new custom field effects the underlying OData Service, Database tables etc.

Image Source: SAP TechED

At this point if you now click on Disable button under tab UI and Reports, you would notice that system would pop up a message displaying which all underlying objects will be effected due to this

Key Users continue from here

Let’s continue with the next steps. In this step, we will add this new custom field to the standard Fiori App

Let’s go back to the app and open the App in the Adaption Mode

Click on the user icon

Next click on the icon – Adapt UI

This would open the app in UI Adaption mode. Now click on the blank area and from the context menu choose option – Add Group

Next right click again on the group name and from the context menu choose option – Add Field

Search for the custom field and then choose that and hit Ok. The custom field will now be added to the new group

Note that, in addition to the custom field, you may see more fields in the list. They may be other custom fields or the standard fields that have not been used in the UI, but are provided by the backend

Next click on Transport on the top right and it would be included in the transport request. For now, we will save it as local object for this demo

Once done, click on Exit. Just refresh your page once. At this stage, don’t forget to publish the new changes. For this come back to your app in the adaption mode and you would notice that Publish button would now appear on the top right. Click on the that and new fields will now be published and included in the UI

Refresh the app once and now you are ready to use field.

Now go ahead and enter the values for the new project including value for new field

Click Save and Proceed and new project will be created and new field value will be saved along with it.

It is important to note here that this group has been included here for this app (Create Internal Project) while creation of new internal project. To have this group available for other related apps (based on your choice) like Plan Customer project, you need to include this in that app as well in the same fashion

As you can see below, the new field is not appearing here for this app, although it now exists in the database. Come to the Adapt UI mode once again and then include this new group for this app and Publish it